


The Empty Chair

by marlowe_tops



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Manipulation, Mental Instability, Psychology, Serial Killing, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:42:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlowe_tops/pseuds/marlowe_tops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lake of illusory blood laps at the steps of Will's porch. Conversations with Hannibal and the employment of an entirely non-professional form of therapy. A serial killer whose victims are dismembered and disfigured, and who sets Will up to be framed for the murders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Fic is completed. Subsequent chapters are just waiting on editing and will be up within the next few days.

Blood slicked like oil across the floor. It spilled up through the floorboards, wood swelling and parting from the flood beneath it, from all the victims who had followed him home. Dozens of victims who felt like _his_ victims, because he had been inside the minds of the men who killed them. Inside his head, he’d seen them die, he heard them beg, he understood the reasons why they had to die. And their blood on his hands followed him home, in pools and floods and rivers that crept up the baseboards and dripped down from the lamps.

Will closed his eyes to block out the sight. Opened them again.

The house was quiet, filled with only the background hum of the thousand tiny sounds that made it home. The comfortable breathing of eight dogs. The click and shudder of the refrigerator settling into a cooling cycle. The twitter of birdsong across the fields.

Will gazed into space at the empty chair in front of him. Eight dogs, one person. Extra chair.

He shut his eyes again. Took a breath.

Feathers rustled inside the room, punctuated by the sharp clop of hooves.

Will quickly opened his eyes again.

“I don’t usually make house calls,” Hannibal said. He crossed his hands at the knuckle and his legs at the ankle, gaze steady on his new patient. He gave off that uncomfortable sense of being able to read people at a glance, and Will hated being read.

“I’m sorry,” Will said, breath coming fast and uneven. He sat up straighter in his chair, rubbing sweaty palms against his jeans. Hannibal looked out of place in his house in his bespoke suit and perfectly groomed fingernails. As though he might be soiled by coming in contact with Will, with his messy house and rumpled hair. Will opened his mouth to offer coffee, and then recalled that he had none left, not even instant. Nothing in the house but dog food. “Offices make me—“

He glanced up at Hannibal. Glanced quickly away, avoiding eye contact. Decided not to finish the sentence. “I appreciate your making an exception.”

“It is my pleasure,” Hannibal said, voice restrained and polite. Giving nothing away.

Will squirmed. He could read most people at a glance. Years of experience had taught him to recognize the way people shifted, the lines of their bodies writing out _distrust_ and _suspicion_ as they watched him walk inside the minds of psychopaths and walk back out with answers. He knew when people were weighing his value, and when they were weighing his danger.

Hannibal could not be read. The lines of his body wrote only _polite_ , and _sophisticated_. There was one more, a line of _trustworthy_ along his jaw that seemed to flicker on and off, like an x-ray lighting the bones beneath the skin, but Will couldn’t tell whether _trustworthy_ lay along the bone or along the skin.

“Jack Crawford is concerned about your mental stability,” Hannibal prompted, evidently wanting Will to elaborate upon the topic.

“Jack Crawford is concerned about me turning into a serial killer,” Will clarified. His eyes flickered back and forth across the middle distance, seeing nothing, thinking nothing.

“Because that is your job,” Hannibal said. “You become serial killers.”

“Yes.” Will bit the word out, displeased with it.

“How do you feel about your mental stability?” Hannibal asked.

Will’s eyes flicked toward him again. The question caught his attention, made him curious. How did he feel about his mental stability?

“I feel like I’m drowning,” he said.

The floorboards swayed beneath him, adrift in the sea of blood that spilled from his hands and the throats of his victims.

Will shuddered, trying to shake it off.

“What do you see?” Hannibal asked, missing nothing.

“Blood,” Will said. “The blood of all their victims. I feel like it has followed me home. I can’t get it off my hands. Even if I could, it’s flooding in everywhere, and I can’t--”

Stopping short and gasping for air, Will rubbed his hands over his face.

“Jack Crawford requires my evaluation regarding whether you are capable of continuing your work in the field, or if you should be returned to teaching.”

“I know,” Will said, looking anywhere but at Hannibal.

“What do you want?”

Will’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“How would you prefer your employment with the FBI to continue? Or would you rather it didn’t?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

Will tapped his fingernail against the arm of his chair, thinking about the way Hannibal’s words flowed like honey into his ear, with smooth and rumbling inflection. It was insidious, how tantalizingly comfortable Hannibal was to be around. Will didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to be analyzed. And yet here he was, spilling out secrets as if his tongue was no longer his own. “I want to continue.”

“Very well. Why?”

Chewing on his lip, Will tapped his fingernail harder, trying to contain the urge to bolt and his own heart’s need to burst out of his chest. “Because I am nothing. I am a vessel. When I’m solving these crimes, I have a purpose. I am a person. When they’re over, and I return here, I am empty again, with only the shadows of the murderers echoing around in my head. I don’t like feeling empty.”

“I will make the recommendation to Jack that you continue in the field. And in the meantime, you and I will continue talking.”

“Talking,” Will repeated.

“You don’t like talking?”

“I don’t like people inside my head,” Will growled. He could hear the tick tick tick of the clock on the wall, hammering against his attention. He shoved it away, locking the walls of his mind against it. “My thoughts are my own. I don’t want anyone else seeing them.”

“Because you don’t think anyone would approve. Because you fear that those around you would condemn you for the thoughts inside your mind."

Will clenched his jaw, displeased about Hannibal’s determination to pry open the locks on Will’s mind. He was right, though. Jack Crawford made use of Will's abilities, but treated him like a loose cannon that might at any time explode upon its allies. “They already don’t approve.”

"You must put that aside when we are together," Hannibal told him, with his gracefully enunciated accent. "There is nothing that you can tell me that would shock me. I invite you to try."

“What happened to you?” Will asked him, seizing upon the tiny clue he caught within Hannibal’s words and turning it back on him. “What have you seen that makes you so confident that I can’t tell you anything worse?”

Hannibal’s face shuttered. Will wouldn’t have thought it possible. That face was already so impassive, almost inhuman in its calm acceptance of all horrors and all confessions. But in the moment that Will looked up with his challenge, he saw Hannibal lock himself behind a mask, shutting down all possible reaction to his question. It made Will’s heart give an extra thud.

“What happened to you?” Hannibal asked instead, voice dangerously soft. “What was the first time you found yourself inside the mind of a serial killer?”

Will dropped eye contact, conceding that round. Better not to get an answer than to let Hannibal continue that line of questioning.

Letting the subject drop, Hannibal sat in silence for a minute. Will stewed in his worries, slowly relaxing and letting them go as he trusted that Hannibal wasn’t going to push.

“I want you to understand that you are safe with me,” Hannibal said, hands half-steepled. “No matter what you tell me, it will be confidential. You will find that I am not afraid of you. I have no concerns about the dangers within your head.”

 _Shouldn’t you?_ Will thought, and realized when Hannibal shifted that he’d said it aloud.

“Jack Crawford sees you as something valuable and delicate, and fears that someone will get cut on the shards when you break. I believe he is wrong.”

Will swallowed and licked his lips, words coming out thin and dry. “Is he?”

“You are not a tool or a vessel, Will. You are a person.”

Brows drawing together painfully, Will dropped his eyes to the floor. No one thought of him as a person. He didn’t even think of himself as a person. He was useful when there was a crime to be solved, and a nuisance that had to be babysat the rest of the time, and those two things often overlapped. A useful nuisance. Nothing more.

~

Bubbles shifted and popped around the rim of his coffee, merging into one another only to grow too large and pop, dying one at a time until only the tiniest ones survived, huddled at the far edges of the cup.

“Your coffee is growing cold,” Hannibal said. And he had gone to such care to make it. He’d brought a French Press for Will, along with coffee that tasted like caramel and woodsmoke instead of the burnt-cardboard flavor of instant that Will usually drank.

“It’s very good,” Will said, without feeling. It was very good. Some part of his brain recognized and appreciated that, marveling at Hannibal’s ability to make coffee that tasted appealing. But he wasn’t hungry, and everything tasted like ashes in his mouth.

“What happened?” Hannibal asked, intuiting that something had unsettled Will more than usual.

“A woman in the grocery recognized me from the photos in the Tattler.” Will confessed, pressing his lips together until it hurt.

“What did she say?” Hannibal prompted.

Will grit his teeth, taking care forming his words. “She expressed her opinion that the FBI should be keeping psychopaths in jail, not in an office.”

“Ah,” Hannibal said. “Did you respond?”

Huffing out his breath irritably through his nose, Will looked up just long enough to watch Hannibal’s reaction as he spoke. “I pointed out to her that our justice system only incarcerates people who are convicted of a crime.”

“How did she react to that?”

“Some vitriol about the FBI not doing their job.”

“I see.”

Hannibal shifted in his chair, resettling himself comfortably. Will stirred his coffee with a thoughtful fingertip, watching it instead of Hannibal, and then lifted his wet finger to his lips and licked the drop of coffee from it. His fingertip tasted like salt and blood, and he winced, cup rattling in his saucer.

The lake of illusory blood around the house gave a sudden lurch, crashing a wave into the back windows. Will’s coffee spilled.

Hannibal took the cup from him smoothly, rising and setting it in the sink. He washed it out with neat, efficient movements, giving Will a few moments of privacy to recover himself.

With the safety of having Hannibal’s back turned, Will watched him moving around the kitchen. All of his movements were gracefully efficient—no energy wasted, no action unintended. Admiring it in silence for a few minutes, Will tensed slightly when he realized that he was admiring.

Hannibal felt safe. He had agreed to Will’s request that the required therapy sessions be conducted in his private home, and it very quickly seemed as though he belonged here. He didn’t, of course. Nothing could look more out of place in Will’s ordinary, neglected home than the refined elegance of Hannibal in his three-piece suits. But there was something comforting about his presence. Will genuinely liked his company, although a very loud part of his mind insisted that liking anyone’s company only ever resulted in them learning more about him and then beating a fast retreat. Which was all the more dangerous because Hannibal was here to pry free every one of Will’s secrets.

Returning to him with a fresh cup, Hannibal put it into his hands and waited to make sure that his grip was steady before releasing it. “Drink,” he ordered.

His fingertips brushed the bone of Will’s wrist as he pulled away. Will tensed, but said nothing. He drank his coffee.


	2. Flesh

“You look good today,” Hannibal said, as he climbed the steps of Will’s porch.

Leaning his arms against the front railing, Will glanced over at him, keeping his unruly hair blocking Hannibal’s view of his eyes. “Was that a compliment?”

“Merely an observation,” Hannibal said, with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. He took a seat in one of Will’s patio chairs and crossed his legs comfortably in the way he favored. “You look less exhausted than usual.”

“I’ve been sleeping better,” Will said, wanting to leave the topic there and knowing that he wouldn’t.

“Is that so? Good. Any particular reason?”

“No,” Will said, intentionally stonewalling.

“Are you still having the dreams?”

Will blushed, his cheeks instantly betraying him. “The dreams are better,” he said.

Out of his periphery, he saw Hannibal sit forward a little more in his chair. He’d noticed the blush. Of course he’d noticed the blush. And of course he’d be putting the little pieces together--Will blushed on a question regarding dreams, so Will wasn’t still talking about the nightmares, Will was having dreams that he considered shameful, embarrassing, or scandalous--and picking out just the right questions to trick all of Will’s defenses wide open.

“What are you dreaming about, Will?” Hannibal asked him, because they both knew that Will was hiding something.

“Sex,” Will said, with a sharp huff of breath, hoping that if he gave vague, accurate information, he’d be able to answer Hannibal’s questions and derail the topic before it got too specific. “I’ve been dreaming about sex. Which, I’ve got to say, is a great improvement to dreaming about corpses.”

“Sex,” Hannibal repeated. He relaxed again, accepting the answer.

“Lots of sex,” Will offered, providing information now in hopes that it would trick Hannibal into thinking that Will was surrendering all the information there was on the topic. “Constantly. It’s, um. Good.”

“With whom,” Hannibal said, his blank inflection making quite clear that he was prompting for the information Will had specifically left out.

Will froze, a chill shooting down his spine.

He kept his eyes focused on the grass of his lawn, where the edge of the lawn melted into trees and mist, both of them offering frames around the fields near his home.

“Anyone,” he lied. “Everyone. A pretty girl I saw in line at the bank. Dr. Bloom. Jack even showed up in one of the dreams, although I really have to hope that he never makes a repeat appearance...”

“With whom,” Hannibal repeated, voice quiet and firm. He knew Will was lying. Of course he knew. He always knew.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Will said, turning his back on the fields and crossing his arms defensively.

“I think that you do,” Hannibal said. He rose to his feet and took a measured step forward, bringing him just within arms reach.

Will hugged himself tighter, tilting his face away so that his eyes were better hidden but his ear was turned toward Hannibal, listening.

“Tell me about your dreams,” Hannibal said.

This close, Will could hear him breathing. A little closer and Will would be able to hear his heart beating a steady, comforting rhythm in his chest. Closer than that and Will would hear the blood rushing through his veins, flooding in and out along his limbs.

“They’re about you,” Will said, making his voice irritable to help conceal the fear of abandonment. “They’re always about you. I can’t get you out of my head.”

“I see,” Hannibal said, emotionless.

“Creates a bit of a professional conflict, don’t you think?” Will snapped.

“Yes.” Hannibal took a step to the side, looking out across the fields with his hands clasped behind his back. “It does.”

Will huffed out an angry breath. He didn’t want to be given to another therapist. He didn’t want anyone else in his home, and he certainly didn’t want to go to a therapist’s office, where he’d feel simultaneously out of place and trapped. Unknowable as he was, Hannibal was safe. Hannibal accepted him.

“It would be best if I stopped seeing you in a professional capacity,” Hannibal commented. “And a violation of ethics to see you in any other capacity.”

“Just go,” Will said. Hannibal’s crisp elocution grated against his nerves when all Will wanted was understanding and sympathy.

“And yet I find myself reluctant to hand you off to the clumsy fists of any other therapist.”

Will’s eyes slanted toward Hannibal, sensing an alternative option about to be offered.

“Would you be willing to try a form of therapy which is entirely not professional?” Hannibal asked.

Chin lifting, Will watched him openly as long as Hannibal was looking out across the fields. He didn’t know what to say--didn’t know what was being asked or offered.

Hannibal looked ethereal in the fading light. Tall and slender, with a suit that set off his figure to exquisite advantage, he looked like an angel of judgement. He looked nothing and everything like the Hannibal who had been featured so prominently in Will’s dreams.

And then he looked back at Will, catching his eyes for once unguarded and open.

Will’s breath stalled in his throat, trapped in the moment and unable to look away.

Hannibal’s head inclined very slightly, and his fine line of his lips seemed to curve. “Come inside, Will. It seems to me that you could benefit from cooking lessons.”

Insecure but willing to accept that Hannibal would stay, Will dropped his gaze and let Hannibal hold the door for him as they walked inside.

~

“Slice it thinly.” Hannibal’s voice rumbled in his ear, low and soft, in the way that sent vibrations shooting through Will’s nerves all the way to his fingertips.

Tensing his jaw to help himself focus, Will set the blade of the knife to the meat again and sliced through it, more thinly than the last cut.

The knife was exceptionally sharp, some manner of Swiss-made tempered steel designed for chefs--the details of it had gone straight over Will’s head. He was trying to care about the perfectionist, gourmet style of cooking that Hannibal taught him, but some of the details his brain simply discarded.

Knife: sharp knife.

He focused on it, watching the way that the red-slicked blade dipped into the meat, how his hand pulled back and the knife obeyed, gliding through the wet flesh. Easier to focus on that than the way Hannibal’s hand rested over his own, offering slight corrections as necessary. Hannibal’s hands stayed clean and dry as they cooked. Will’s were bloody.

And far easier to focus on cooking than on Hannibal’s other hand, which rested low on Will’s belly, both steadying and possessive.

He didn’t want to think about those things. He didn’t want to look at them too closely. It was easier to simply accept what was happening. By giving up control of his decisions to Hannibal, he gave up the need to feel guilt over his decisions. Hannibal accepted him. Hannibal didn’t fear him. It was easy to stop thinking and simply obey Hannibal’s guidance. Let Hannibal do the thinking. Let Hannibal have control.

The knife paused. Will’s eyes closed, relaxing into that feeling. Don’t think. Just trust.

It was relaxing, to not hide himself behind walls and defenses, to not constantly deflect the attempts of others to read and analyze him. Let Hannibal read him. He trusted Hannibal’s analysis.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Will lifted the knife again, drew it slowly through the meat they were preparing. “This feels good. I like this. I feel safe.”

“That pleases me.” Hannibal’s arm tightened around him, so that Will could feel the full line of Hannibal’s body pressed against his back. His eyes fluttered and he took a breath, savoring it for a moment before beginning to work again.


	3. Bone

“Jack didn’t want me to tell you about this.”

Dr. Alana Bloom’s mouth was a firm line as she stood in Will’s kitchen and accepted a glass of water. The glass contained clear water with ice, and a slice of cucumber and lemon. Alana looked at it, looked at Will, and then looked more closely around his kitchen. “You cleaned.”

“I told you about Dr. Lecter, the therapist I chose from Jack’s list,” Will explained. “He seems to be a good influence on me.”

“There’s a slice of cucumber in my water,” Alana pointed out, having a hard time equating the Will she knew with this kind of delicate refinement.

“Do you want me to get you a fresh glass, plain?” Will offered. He started to reach for the glass, thought better of it and put his hands down, and then pulled them up to his chest to keep from fidgeting.

“No.” Alana watched him. Will tried not to squirm under the force of her analysis. “That’s some therapist you got yourself.”

“I’m getting cooking lessons,” Will said, leaving out the details, “per his recommendation.”

“I’m glad for you,” Alana said, decisively. “I’m glad he’s helping.”

There was a pause as Alana remembered why she’d come, and hesitated on the decision of how--or whether--to bring the conversation back to it.

“What didn’t Jack want you to tell me?” Will asked, keeping his eyes unfocused and pointed in the general vicinity of her left elbow, to make his thoughts harder to read.

“They found a body about thirty miles from here. The case is in bureaucratic hell, because the FBI thinks it has hallmarks of a serial killing, but they can’t take over from the local authorities because they haven’t got any other recent killings that match this one.”

Will didn’t understand why she found this murder significant. “Why didn’t Jack want you to tell me?”

“Mainly because he thought there was no reason to bother you,” Alana suggested, still holding something back. “Until there’s another murder that matches this one...”

“Why did you think I should be told about it?” Will tried, instead.

Alana shifted her weight from one heel to the other, still shifting around the topic. “They didn’t find a whole body. A head, and part of an arm. Authorities are combing the woods, looking for the... rest of it. The body was dismembered and probably scattered, but the scattering may have been done by wild animals.”

Will waited for her to get around to her point.

“The face was badly disfigured with acid post mortem.”

Will felt the hair on his arms rise. The disfiguration was significant. Why was it significant? “To make identification more difficult.”

“They don’t think so. The teeth and fingerprints were intact.”

“Why did you think I should be told?” Will repeated.

“It’s not far from you. I thought you deserved to know. I thought you would feel better keeping your eyes open, rather than being surprised by it later.”

“I’m a suspect,” Will said, getting at last what she wasn’t saying.

“You’re not a suspect,” Alana said firmly.

Will tensed his jaw, staring angrily into the space above her left elbow.

“ _If_ they find another body with similar M.O. it is possible that you might be under some suspicion,” she admitted.

“Why would I be under suspicion?”

“Because of what you are, Will. Because you fit the profile.”

“I’ve fit profiles before,” Will snapped. “And been cleared. I have been cleared. Jack has my current psychological evaluations...”

“Because you empathize so strongly,” Alana said, interrupting him. “It’s in your file. You’re supposedly capable of pure empathy. Because you take on the identities of others so strongly, you may be at risk for feeling that it erases your own identity.”

“Does my file also mention that I don’t like being analyzed?” Will asked. His gaze dropped to the floor between them, brows pulled tightly together.

“Jack believes that if you ever were to become violent--”

“I’ve never shown signs of violence,” Will said.

“--that it might look like this. The killer felt the need to erase the identity of his victims. He needed to make them no longer a person.”

“Most psychopaths need to objectify their victims in some way.”

“I know,” Alana said, more softly. “I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect you. That’s why I wanted you to know.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bloom,” Will said, feeling prickly and defensive. “I appreciate knowing that you don’t think I’m a violent psychopath.”

“I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing, Will. Please don’t take this the wrong way.”

“I won’t,” Will promised. “I’m used to being the subject of suspicion. This isn’t any different than the rest of my life.”

“Okay.” Alana gave him a careful smile. Setting down her glass, she gathered herself to leave. She hadn’t touched the drink. “I look forward to meeting your Dr. Lecter, Will. I’m glad to see you doing so much better.”

~

Will knelt. He closed his eyes, leaned in. Felt Hannibal’s hand settle in his hair, fingertips massaging through the curls in slow, small circles.

“Why is this bothering you?” Hannibal asked.

Will recognized the prompt. He was supposed to begin talking now, spilling out confessions one after the other in messy, wet piles that Hannibal would tidy up and lock away in his meticulous record system.

“Being suspected of serial murder?” Will countered. “Wouldn’t it bother you?”

“Depends,” Hannibal said, accepting the hypothetical with easy humor. “Are you guilty?”

Will startled, pulling back from his hand. “Am I _guilty_?”

Hannibal folded his hands, waiting for Will to return to him again, or to start talking again. Preferably both.

“No,” Will said. “I’m not _guilty_.”

“Then it bothers you to be unjustly suspected.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Hannibal repeated, pushing him to dig deeper.

“They’re my coworkers. They’re the only people who know me as anything other than ‘that freak from the FBI’. They’re the only people to whom I am _Will_.” Once he had started, the words spilled out of him, visceral and bloody. “They’re the only ones who still see me as a person.”

Swallowing back the bile in his throat, Will shifted and sat down hard on the cold tile floor. He felt weak with the realization of human dependency.

“You don’t need them,” Hannibal said. His hand settled back in Will’s hair. It was warm and gentle, irresistibly coaxing. “I see you as you truly are. I’m the only one you need.”

Will rested his head against Hannibal’s leg, feeling weak and helpless. Some tiny part of him was hammering at the walls of his mind, begging him to control himself instead of giving it all over to Hannibal. But he felt so very tired of fighting against the suspicions and fears of people around him. With Hannibal, he didn’t have to fight.

Will closed his eyes.

~

“Will? It’s Alana.”

“Alana,” Will repeated, foolishly. He tucked the phone against his ear and moved to the sink, washing his hands. She’d distracted him out of his thoughts. He was a mess. Everything was a mess. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, although she didn’t sound fine. There was a tension in her voice that suggested she had some new piece of information she didn’t like and didn’t want to tell him. Will’s heart dropped. He didn’t want to hear this. “Will, can I ask you something that might sound strange?”

 _Please don’t._ “What is it?”

“Where did you get Dr. Lecter’s number?”

That did sound strange, although it was at least a far more harmless question than what he’d been expecting. Will blinked, frowning down at his wet hands in the sink. “The list,” he said, after a pause. “I thought I told you that. Jack gave me a list, told me to find someone on that list I could tolerate. Dr. Lecter sent him the requested evaluation--why? What’s going on?”

“It’s probably nothing. I looked him up in the database. Professional curiosity. I wanted to know who had managed such a positive effect on you.”

She wasn’t getting to the point. “What did you find?”

“I didn’t,” she said, wary of her own words. “That’s the thing. He wasn’t in the database.”

Will agreed that was strange, but didn’t understand why it merited a call. “So someone needs to update the database.”

“I know, you’re probably right. I’m probably being paranoid. But Will, if Dr. Lecter isn’t in the FBI database, why was he on Jack’s list?”

Head aching, Will rubbed at the bridge of his nose with wet fingers. “Alana, I’m busy right now. He probably knew Dr. Lecter in a professional capacity. I know he was seeing a therapist last year, because of his wife...”

“That’s probably it. Forgive me for being paranoid. I just needed to hear someone tell me whether or not I was sounding crazy.” He could almost hear her self-deprecating half-smile that she used to ameliorate awkward situations.

“It’s fine, Alana. I’ll dig up a copy of the list. It’s around here somewhere.”

“Forget it,” Alana said firmly. “I trust you, and I’m glad that Dr. Lecter is helping. I’ll stop trying to stick my nose in your business.”

“All right. Goodbye, Alana.”

“Take care of yourself, Will.”

~

“I can’t put you on this case, Will.”

Will stared at the front corner of Jack’s desk, focusing on it with sightless intensity. “I didn’t ask to be put on this case.”

“You’re too close to it,” Jack continued.

“I’m not _close_ to it,” Will snapped, “I don’t know anything about it. All I know is what’s been on the news.”

“Physically close,” Jack clarified. “This is the third dismembered, disfigured body to be found within two counties of you.”

“And some of the team feels that’s too much of a coincidence,” Will said. “When everyone has just been waiting all along for me to snap.”

“There’s nothing in these murders that links back to you,” Jack said. “We can’t find any connection between the victims, and none at all to you.”

“You looked, though,” Will said, feeling betrayed by that knowledge.

“We looked,” Jack agreed.

There was nothing that pointed directly at Will. That was what made it so suspicious. It was all subtle hints, little psychological nudges that made them think of him. It even made _Will_ think of himself.

He didn’t have enough knowledge of the crimes, not enough details. Just the dismemberment of the bodies and disfiguring the faces with acid.

_I wanted to make them no longer people. They did not think I was a person. They were rude. They were offensive. They did not deserve to be people. They were less than people. I fixed it. I made them no longer people. This is my design._

Will snapped out of it. Jack was watching him. He knew what had just happened. Of course he did. He knew what Will looked like when he was reconstructing crimes in his head. Will took a shaky breath. “Have you considered that I’m being framed?”

“I’ve considered it,” Jack agreed. “It doesn’t look anything like a frame job. It’s too subtle. You’re not even a suspect, Will. Nothing links to you. If you were being framed, there would be at least one arrow pointing directly to you. There isn’t. Just coincidence and a few little things that make the behavioral team uncomfortable.”

“I’m not a suspect, but of course you haven’t got anyone else who is a suspect,” Will said, irritable.

“No,” Jack confirmed. There was no use sniping at him. No one had skin as thick as Jack Crawford. “Go home, Will. Keep yourself busy, and don’t make any plans for taking vacations out of the country anytime soon.”

 _Because I’m officially not on house arrest,_ Will thought. He tensed his jaw. “It wasn’t me,” he said, not getting up from his chair.

“I know,” Jack said. “I know you. Now go home.”


	4. Soul

The house was quiet. Safe. Empty.

Empty of Hannibal’s irresistible presence around him, guiding and coaxing him. His emotions on this topic swirled. He felt alone, relieved, safe, bereft, suspicious, frightened, lost, so lost…

Will tapped his finger against the arm of his chair, staring at the empty chair across from him where Hannibal sat.

Subtle, brilliant Hannibal, who had seen every tiny corner of Will’s mind.

Nothing pointed directly at Will, which was what made it so suspicious. It was so very like him, the profile so perfectly fit, except for the ways it wasn’t. That made it both better and worse than if it had been a straightforward frame job, where each scene had a piece or two of evidence that linked neatly back to Will. The kind of murderer who would go to this length to nudge the minds of the FBI toward Will should want a nice tight noose around the evidence.

It was most likely it was just a coincidence. Will fit the profile. He fit plenty of profiles. It couldn’t be a frame at all unless there was someone who knew Will on such a detailed, delicate level, someone intelligent enough to make everything hint deftly toward suspecting Will.

And didn’t that make an unsettling amount of sense? Once he began to suspect, this case had Hannibal all over it. If he were to profile this case, he’d describe a Will being puppeted by a Hannibal, and that was exactly the sort of thing Hannibal would lay out for a trap. A direct link to Will would be too gauche. If he were to set up a frame, he would do it this way: subtly damning.

But _why_? Why throw Will onto the flames, when Will had been so absolutely devoted to him, so completely trusting of Hannibal puppeting his strings? Why set up a frame that only Hannibal could have built, and then leave Will by himself to begin to suspect it?

None of it made sense. The unease crawled like spiders beneath his skin, skin in which he had felt so comfortable these past months because of Hannibal’s care and acceptance.

_Where did you get Dr. Lecter’s number?_

Will launched himself from the chair, taking the stairs two at a time to the desk by the phone where he had called Hannibal to arrange their first meeting. He dug through the drawers with shaking hands, flipping through pages until he found one, neatly typed, without header or ornamentation: a list of names and phone numbers.

He didn’t need to scan the list for Hannibal’s name. It was at the bottom. Hand-written, in Jack’s large-handed scrawl.

_This is crazy. I’m being crazy._

Will put the list down on the desk and walked away from it, pacing the room.

The FBI database that Alana would have checked wouldn’t have been limited to the list of Jack’s preferences. She would have been searching all known, practicing psychiatrists. Alana was intelligent and thorough. When she hadn’t found him on that search, she would have expanded it. Practicing within past five years, for example. Past ten years.

Why wasn’t Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the database?

 _What do I actually know about him?_ Will asked himself, opening his laptop and doing a search for Dr. Hannibal Lecter, psychiatrist.

No relevant results.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal Lecter.

Nothing. Not a wisp, and on such an unusual name...

Will snapped his laptop shut, standing up and starting to pace.

~

“Will.”

Will ignored him. Regretted giving him the key to his house. Regretted giving him the key to his mind.

“Will, you’re being unreasonable.”

“Who are you?” Will demanded, refusing to look at him.

Comfortably seated in the empty chair as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing had ever been wrong, Hannibal gestured at Will’s usual seat. “You know who I am. Please, have a seat.”

“Why are you doing this?” Will begged.

“I am not doing anything, Will. I have explained this to you, again and again.”

Everything was wrong, everything felt wrong.

The blood was gone, the lake of blood around the house, swelling up from the floorboards, it wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there for months. Will grasped his head, because the _absence_ of his macabre hallucination was what made him feel crazy, more than anything else.

“What have you explained?” Will asked.

“Everything, Will. I’ll explain it to you again, if you would just sit--”

“You’ve been doing these murders. Dismemberment, disfigurement. You’re making the FBI think it’s me.”

“I’ve done no such thing. Will--”

“ _Why_? After everything I’ve done, after the _devotion_ I’ve felt toward you, why would you do this? Why are you just sitting there?”

“Will!”

Will blinked, stopping in the middle of the floor. His doorbell was ringing like someone was leaning on it.

“Will, I know you’re home. Open the door.” Alana’s voice.

The chair was empty. Hannibal was... not here. How long ago had Hannibal been here? They had just been talking--when had Hannibal left?

“Coming!” he called, shoving thoughts of his fragmenting sanity to the back of his mind. “Coming.”

He opened the door. Alana gave him a worried frown. “I knew you were home,” she said, stubbornly. “Your car’s in the drive.”

“Did you see--” Will asked, holding onto the door and feeling that he might fall over if he let it go. “A car. Did you see a car?”

Alana’s frown deepened. “What kind of car?”

What kind of car did Hannibal drive? How did he not know that?

“Never mind,” Will said. “Come in.”

She stepped around him into the house as though stepping delicately around a corpse. “Will, are you all right? You look...”

_Crazy. I look crazy._

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Will told her, following her into the kitchen to talk.

“Again? I’m sorry.” She stopped in his kitchen, running a fingertip over the counter. It wasn’t clean as it had been. He’d let it get dusty. Dishes in the sink he hadn’t done. Alana politely didn’t comment.

“What brings you out here?” Will asked.

Alana held out a folder she was carrying. “I’m convinced. I think you’re being framed.”

Taking the folder, Will stared at the label on the front without opening it.

“There are parts that fit the profile for you, but others don’t make sense. It’s like a jigsaw, with pieces from two entirely different puzzles.”

“I think Dr. Lecter is our killer.” Will confessed.

Alana stared at him. “You didn’t think maybe you should bring that to someone’s attention? Will!”

“He doesn’t exist,” Will continued, staring at the folder and feeling lost. “He’s not in the database, I can’t find him, it’s like someone made him up.”

Unsettled by the way he was talking, Alana took a step back, fingers brushing along the cabinets in case she needed to grab them for support.

Her fingers crossed a rough, bare patch on the finished cabinets and she paused, looking down.

There was a mark on the door of the cabinets, white and stark against the warm brown wood of the cabinets, where the splash of acid had eaten it away.

Alana stared at it, pieces falling into place, and then she looked up at Will.

He held her gaze, knowing it was too late for them both, knowing there was nothing he could do, and then his eyes skittered over her shoulder to where Hannibal was walking up behind her with soft, silent steps.

~

“She’s dead,” Will said. He sat in the corner, on the floor, usual chair abandoned out of sheer dejection.

Hannibal sat in the empty chair, as always. Calm. Reasonable. His suit was tidy and unmarred, not even a fleck of blood to give him away. “She was a danger to us both. She was a loose thread who needed to be tied.”

“They’ll figure it out,” Will said, feeling numb with horror. “They already suspect.”

“Their suspicions are not a problem. I will handle it.”

“You killed her,” Will whispered, lost and betrayed on all sides.

“No, Will,” Hannibal corrected. “I haven’t killed anybody.”

“You have,” Will raged, struggling to his feet and retreating to the safety of the kitchen. “You’ve killed all of them.”

“Will,” Hannibal said from the dining room, not moving from the chair. “Calm down. Trust me. If you trust me, I can handle this.”

“I can’t,” Will said, shaking. “I can’t handle this.”

He dropped his head onto his arms, alone in the kitchen but for the dogs lingering worriedly at the corners of the room.

“I can’t let you,” Will said. “I can’t trust you.”

The knife on the counter was sharp and gleaming. Will reached for it, testing his thumb against the edge.

~

When it was done, Will left the body in the chair and returned to the kitchen.

His hands and shirt were blood-soaked, his dining room ruined.

Sanity shaking, he dropped the knife in the sink and turned the water on to run over his red-stained hands.

The world outside was silent and muffled, calm in a sea of fog. The lake of blood was long since gone.

His fingertips shriveled beneath the water, and he turned it off, dripping.

He felt empty and alone, his thoughts quiet. Numb, he returned to the dining room, where the empty chair was as clean and bloodless as it had always been.

Exhausted, he sank into his chair and stared at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hat-tip to Kai for cheerleading me through this fic and to Dragunov for beta-reading.
> 
> Find me on tumblr as marlowe-tops.


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